


The right lie

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [35]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:07:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26107687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Frank gets a mysterious late-night phone call.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [35]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713





	The right lie

**_I can't see your face in my mind_ **

After the memorial Mass, they'd had a private wake. It was only supposed to be the two of them, Vince's Field Director and his Lifeguard. But around midnight, Lococco had showed up, and the drinking had gone on 'til dawn.

Before he'd left, Lococco had laid his hands on Frank's shoulders and looked into his face. "I want you to listen to me."

"I'm listening," Frank told him. He knew they thought he was drunk, but he wasn't. He was just very, very tired.

"I expect you to keep your head. It's not over, I'm still following up leads. The thing is, the people I'm dealing with aren't very nice." Frank tried to give him his best "no shit, Sherlock" look but his eyes wouldn't quite focus. "To put it bluntly, most of 'em are scum. They have no souls; they're only in it for the money."

"Is there a point to this?" Frank asked. Lococco's hands on him, and his own confusion about what was going on, were making him a little nervous.

"There's a point. To get information, I have to give information. People you wouldn't want on the same continent with you know things, about me, about Vince. They can smell the desperation on all of us. If money was an issue, that would be a problem. Fortunately, I've got enough green to make up for it."

"So what **is** the problem?" Dan asked.

"The problem," Lococco said, looking into Frank's face with great intensity, "is that they're parasites. Give 'em a whiff of blood, they'll follow it forever. They want to suck us dry—you, me, Aiuppo, anybody who might pay for info about Vince."

Roger's hands clamped down harder, shook him a little. "Frank, you gotta believe I know what I'm doing. If there's a lead out there, I'm going to follow it. I'm not going to stop just because it's hard, or because I've gotten tired. I'm going to bring his body home, one way or the other."

 _One way or the other_ echoed in Frank's mind. He wanted to cry.

"I want you to understand, you're a potential target for these people. If you get a call in the middle of the night from some guy who claims to have Vinnie, to know where he is, whatever, chances are it's a hoax—"

"Chances are—" Frank began, but Lococco cut him off.

"Yeah, chances are. And if he's asking for money, the chances are even higher—"

"You think I give a shit?" Frank asked. "You think I wouldn't empty out my bank account, sell my car—"

"I know you would! But there's no reason to, I've got all the money we need. And there's sure no reason to pour blood on the water, to attract these leeches. You get one of these calls, you refer him to me. You tell him I'm the money man, that all you can offer him is whatever your federal employee pension brings. You give him the number I gave you, and Frank, I'll wring every drop of whatever information he has out of him, so help me God. You **do not** engage." Roger shook him again, the way Frank had shaken Drake when he'd told him not to play in the street. "You understand me? You get a call in the middle of the night from some guy saying he escaped with Vince, he's calling for him, whatever, you **do not** go running out to some secret rendezvous with your wallet bulging with ten dollar bills. You show yourself as a weak link, you'll be endangering the whole operation." He paused, then said with as much kindness as he could, "It might be better if you got an unlisted phone number—"

"No!"

"Frank—" The understanding and pity in Dan's voice echoed what was in Lococco's face. Frank didn't care.

"What if he tried to call?" Frank asked. "What if he tried to call and heard my number wasn't listed?" _Vince, knocking on the door of a house where no lights were on, no one was home._ "I can't do that," he said.

Neither man had answered.

**_Let them photograph your soul_**

It was ridiculously melodramatic, a phone call in the wee hours of the night, a cryptic message whispered in his ear: "I've got something you want."

Frank shifted the receiver slightly, to get a better look at the clock: three-twenty-two. "Oh, yeah? What've you got?" His first thought was that it was an obscene phone call (Daryl, maybe?) and those could be entertaining, if the pervert on the other end had any kind of imagination. This was what Frank's life had come to.

"Is your phone safe?" Probably not an obscene phone caller, unless it really was Daryl; they normally didn't ask about tapped lines. One of the parasites Lococco had warned him about?

Frank yawned. "Isn't it a little late to be trying to sell me phone insurance?"

A sigh. "You must not want him back as bad as he thinks."

 _Him. Him was Vince, him was always Vince._ It had been over three years since Lococco's little lecture, but Frank recalled it vividly. _One of Lococco's parasites has seen fit to crawl out of the woodwork after all this time? Answer him!_ "Yes, the phone is safe." Frank had been checking daily ever since Vince's disappearance, afraid that Vince would call, and before Frank could get to him, They (the ubiquitous They who featured in all of Frank's paranoid delusions) would track him down and whisk him away, leaving Frank nothing but a phone call no one would believe he'd ever received.

Or maybe it wasn't paranoia. This was, after all, a man who had been the target of a vendetta hatched within the walls of the White House. It wasn't inconceivable that a capital-T They would be after him. 

There was a long pause, and Frank got impatient. "C'm'on, I'm playing your game. What've you got for me?"

"Vinnie."

 _Of course._ "Sure you do. Who is this?"

"Manuel Noriega, what do you care as long as you get him back?" The voice sounded royally pissed off.

"Well, Manuel, what guarantee do I have that you're not just some crank?"

"You want references? Call his stepfather, ask him about his trip to the West Coast a couple years back. He'll deny taking one, but listen to how he says it, you'll hear the truth."

"Well, that's certainly convoluted. You couldn't've just gone the easy route and slipped it into my fortune cookie?"

The line went dead. Frank looked at the receiver for a moment, sat up and put it back in the cradle. _Lococco said they were like fortune tellers—half information, half intuition. The more you say, the more you feed them. Sure he knows about Vince's stepfather, it was on the front page of the goddamn newspaper._

The phone rang again. Frank picked it up, but before he could say anything, the voice whispered, "What the hell's the matter with you?"

"Look, you want me to put you in touch with the money man in this whole deal, I got his number. He's the one who pays for information. Me, all I got is what's in my kid's college fund—"

"I don't have information," 'Manuel' said. "I'm not looking for money, and I don't want to talk to anybody but you. I got Vinnie. You want him or don't you?"

This didn't fit any scenario Lococco had outlined, except for the middle of the night part. Frank didn't answer and 'Manuel' went on, "What the fuck's the problem? I thought you'd be thrilled to get him back. He sure thinks you would be, anyway." There was an odd note of personal outrage in the whispered voice. When Frank still didn't reply, the tone went cold. "Fine. You can remember this conversation when they find him at the bottom of a bridge. He carries your phone number around in his wallet, maybe they'll call you."

Lococco's voice kept telling him not to do this, but Frank ignored him. _How would he know about Vince wanting to jump off a bridge?_ "What do you want?"

A sound of exasperation, then, "I want—" That wasn't a whisper, and Frank felt a tickle of recognition. "I wanna give him back to you!" 'Manuel' was whispering again.

Frank's heart fluttered with hope, but he still had to ask. "Why?"

"I don't have to tell you that."

 _No, you don't._ "Where did you get him?"

"I stole him. You got a problem with that, don't meet me tomorrow."

"Tomorrow where? When?"

"Observation platform of the Empire State Building. Sometime in the afternoon. Don't worry about knowing me," he forestalled, "I'll know you,"

"And if you don't show up?"

"You'll know you were really talking to Noriega and I don't have Vinnie." The line went dead.

 _The Empire State Building? Who the hell was that, Cary Grant?_ Frank lay back down. "Maybe, with a little luck, the worst thing that will happen to me tomorrow will be, I'll get hit by a car."

Frank arrived early.

He found a parking garage a few blocks away. It was drizzling when he stepped out under the dreary Manhattan sky. Frank hated Manhattan. He'd never told anyone that, nor had he ever told anyone that, if you got right down to it, he hated the whole state of New York. He hated the attitude that New Jersey was somehow nothing more than a try-out for New York, that New Jersey was the farm team of life for New York, that **if you got good enough,** you could get called up from New Jersey and go to New York to live. It pissed him off.

And now New York was raining on him. Well, what else was new? New York had rained on him plenty in his life.

Frank waited in the interminable line, wanting to flash his badge, or maybe his gun, and get rid of all the annoying tourists loitering in front of him, commandeer the elevators—both of them, the fast one that made your ears pop and the stupid little one that took you up the next six floors—whose bright idea had **that** been, anyway? He wanted to just fucking get there, because what if he missed this guy, what if he missed his one and only chance to save Vince, what if—

He wanted to plant himself at the elevators, watch every person who came out, but the fear he'd spook 'Manuel' prevented him. Instead he walked around slowly, pretending to be fascinated with every minute aspect of first the gift shop, then the observatory. He stood in the windy, intermittent, April drizzle and took pictures with the disposable camera he'd bought. He looked through the binoculars. He didn't glance over at the elevators. _Don't worry about knowing me, I'll know you,_ replayed in his head, and those two unwhispered words in a voice that sounded almost-familiar. He heard Lococco laughing at him, scolding him. _He's not one of your leeches; he didn't ask for money._ Frank prayed he was doing the right thing, or at least that he wasn't doing the wrong thing.

He'd been loitering for hours, all his photos taken, all the souvenirs examined, every angle of the supposedly spectacular view looked at, if not appreciated. And the paranoid voices had started in on him. _Maybe it was all just a dream. Maybe it was Lococco, or some pal of his, testing you. He'll show up, call you three kinds of a moron, then tell you he still doesn't have anything. Maybe—_

Frank didn't care. If there was a chance Vince would be there, Frank would stay until they closed the place down, and he'd come back the next day, and the next, and—

Sonny Steelgrave got off the elevator.

 _No, he didn't,_ Frank told himself, but he wasn't very convincing because it was Steelgrave who walked past him, out onto the observation deck, to the west side of the building where the wind was the roughest and the tourists were scarce.

He had his back to Frank, was cupping a gold lighter with one hand while he tried to light a cigarette. 

Frank said the first coherent thought that came to his mind: "You can't smoke here."

"So arrest me," Steelgrave snapped back. 

"I didn't even know you smoked." _That's two stupid things you've said so far, you want to try for three?_

Steelgrave turned to face Frank, blew smoke over his head. "Just started again. Who're you, my doctor?"

 _This isn't happening. This is one of those dreams, or that hallucination— **was** it a hallucination? At least now I know why the voice sounded familiar. _Frank shoved Steelgrave against the cement, went into furious G-man mode. "What kind of joke is this?"

This time Steelgrave blew the smoke in Frank's face. "It's no joke. I've got him and you'll get him when I'm ready."

"Ready for what?"

Instead of answering, Steelgrave said, "What kind of spring weather is this? It's freezing out here," as though Frank was somehow personally responsible for New York's unseasonable chilliness. He pushed Frank away from him, took one last drag on his cigarette before stubbing it out. "I'm going someplace to get drink."

Frank followed Steelgrave, hating him. It was a lie, he knew it, it had to be, Steelgrave did not have Vince. _Then why are you going with him? What if I'm wrong? Should've called Lococco—yeah, that would've been great, Gunfight the at OK Corral replayed a thousand feet up, and then what would have become of Vince? He does not have Vince! Then what's he doing here? You think this is some kind of **coincidence?**_

Frank couldn't find an answer to that. It made no sense that Steelgrave was even alive, let alone that he had Vince—but it made even less sense for him to have called Frank claiming he did, unless it was true.

Steelgrave ignored the Please Wait To Be Seated sign and found them a table with a good view. He also ignored the waitress's disapproving look, giving her his order without taking the menu she offered. Frank didn't know if he kept turned to the window for the view, or to prevent her from getting a good look at his face.

Frank ordered coffee and the waitress left. Steelgrave lit another cigarette. "Give me one good reason not to arrest you right now," Frank demanded.

"Arrest me. Yeah, that's a good one. You do what you want, but if you leave before he gets here, you'll never know."

"What, have you got him stashed somewhere?" Frank asked. "Locked in a basement—?"

Steelgrave gave him an odd look. "Why would I want to lock him up in a basement?"

"Where did you get him?" Frank felt ridiculously as though they were talking about a piece of stolen goods. "And where did you get his car?"

Steelgrave's look got stranger, as though he wanted to ask how Frank knew about the car, but he didn't. "I stole him."

Frank was hating this conversation. Everything that came out of Steelgrave's mouth made him want to argue with him, and not just one argument, but two or three at a time. "He's a person, you can't steal a person. You abducted him?"

Steelgrave didn't seem to be enjoying it any more than Frank was. "What did Aiuppo tell you?"

"Rudy?"

"Yeah, Rudy, your good pal Rudy, what did he tell you?"

"About what?" Frank asked. _My good pal Rudy?_ "I don't know what you're talking about, what's Rudy got to do with it?"

Steelgrave looked like he didn't believe him. "I didn't **abduct** him, he was perfectly willing to come with me, it was Aiuppo who had the objections."

"Wait." Frank let go of the semantics. "Rudy got him back and gave him to **you?"** The agony in his voice embarrassed Frank but he couldn't contain it; this was a blow—to his faith in Aiuppo, to his faith in the world. **"Why?"**

"He didn't give him to me," Steelgrave said impatiently. "I took him. Try and keep up." And then, as if in realization, "You mean, he didn't tell you anything?"

"No, he didn't— You're telling me Rudy Aiuppo got Vince back and told **you** where he was?" Frank wanted to hit someone. Steelgrave would be good because he was right there, and just on general principles, but Rudy was a close second.

"Yeah, something like that."

Steelgrave's lack of conversational cooperation was driving Frank nuts. "When was this?" The waitress came with Frank's coffee and Steelgrave's drink, and Frank decided liquor wasn't a bad idea at all. He ordered a double scotch.

Steelgrave waited for the waitress to leave before answering Frank's question. "Couple years ago."

"A couple of years— Why didn't Vince call me?" Frank had never known such a combination of mortification and exhilaration. _Vinnie is alive! He's home! He's hiding— **from me?**_

Steelgrave shook his head. "You'll have to ask him. He'll be here later." Frank's drink and the BLT Steelgrave had ordered arrived, and Steelgrave turned his full attention to his food.

Frank gulped down half of his drink. The scotch burning his throat was the only sane thing to happen to him all day. There was so much wrong with all this, Frank didn't know where to start. "He's been with you for three years?"

"Two, three," Steelgrave shrugged.

 _Yeah, sure why should you care how long it's been?_ "Why is he even still alive?"

"The guys that grabbed him figured that, being who he was, he might be worth some money to someone."

This answer was so deliberately stupid, so intentionally missed the point, Frank didn't say anything. He just looked at Steelgrave and waited.

"Oh, you mean why didn't **I** pop him?" He shook his head. "None of your business."

"None of this makes any sense. Why, after three years does he suddenly decide—"

"He didn't decide anything, I did. He doesn't decide things. He doesn't even know you're here." Steelgrave was watching Frank intently as he said this, as though trying to gauge his reaction.

Frank hated it, hated having Steelgrave reading him, knowing just how much Vince mattered to him. "What if I said I don't care? Just left now?"

Steelgrave shrugged. "Up to you." He gave Frank a thin smile. "You'd be lying, though. If you weren't interested, you'd have arrested me first thing." He said _arrested_ as though he meant something else, but Frank couldn't figure out what.

On the other hand, why should he care? At that moment he hated Steelgrave more than he'd ever hated anyone in his life. "Day's not over, slick."

Steelgrave put down his sandwich. "Wanna go now? Of course, you don't know when Vinnie's getting here—" He took out his wallet, tossed some money onto the table, and stood up. "You coming? Want to use your handcuffs?"

Frank knew from Vince that when Steelgrave was cornered, he'd go for a bluff; on the other hand, Frank was in no position to call him on it. "Sit down!" Frank snapped, and after considering him for a long, tense moment, Steelgrave sat. 

He picked up his drink, took a swallow. "Got any more threats?"

Frank drank some more of his drink. It didn't seem to be helping any. He signaled to the waitress to bring him another. "I want to know what you're not telling me."

Steelgrave slammed his glass down on the table. "Anything I'm not telling you, you don't need to know because it's none of your business!" With an obvious effort, Steelgrave got himself under control. "Anyway, is there anything I could tell you that would make a difference?"

It was a genuine question, and again he was watching Frank carefully. Frank didn't answer it, though it answered one of his—specifically, what they were doing there. Steelgrave was checking him out, making sure his concern for Vince was real. That was weird.

"When does he get here?" Frank tried like hell to keep the desperation out of his voice, but Steelgrave's smirk told him how badly he was failing. But what could he do? Frank felt as though he couldn't breathe. Until he saw Vince, this was just another one of those dreams.

Steelgrave had finished his sandwich and his drink. He got up from the table. "Stand around by the pay phone, he'll show up."

**_I won't need your picture until we say good-bye_**

After Vince's memorial Mass, Frank had started going to Mass again, not just on Sunday, but every Tuesday at St. Barnabas. He made a novena, then two, three, four—he finally stopped at nine. Nine times nine, that was supposed to be something, wasn't it? Frank couldn't remember, and anyway it seemed like it was stop there, or go on forever, and Frank couldn't do that.

Then he realized he hadn't been to confession since he was twelve years old.

He'd stopped believing in God the year before, when he'd done everything he could think of—wished on his birthday candles, prayed the rosary, threw all the money he could scrounge into the Goodwill Santa's pot—to convince God to make his father love him.

It hadn't happened. God had failed him.

So Frank had stopped believing in God.

He kept going to confession, though, because he was still afraid of going to hell. It took him a while to realize that if there was no God, who was going to send him to hell?

So Frank stopped going to confession. And when he was old enough to do it without his mother knowing about it (and suffering the disappointment he knew she'd feel), he stopped going to Mass.

But maybe he'd never really stopped believing in God, not if he was praying for Vince's safe return. Whether he really believed or not, he knew the rules, and one of the implicit ones was, if you were going to ask a favor, you wore your best suit to ask it in, which in the case of God meant cleaning up your soul. He still remembered Sister Bernadette drawing a picture of the soul on the blackboard, and showing them all how nice and clean it was. Then she drew some marks inside to show how the soul looked when you sinned. And finally, she erased those marks, to show how confession worked. You did this to show your love for God.

Frank couldn't say he loved God because he didn't, but it couldn't hurt to go to confession, so he did, at first barely able to talk to the priest, until finally his anger and fear broke the dam and poured out. After that he went once a week while he made another nine novenas. Forty-nine weeks of going to Mass twice a week, and he didn't go crazy. Frank attributed this to already being crazy.

For Vince the Church was a refuge; for Frank it had been a Hail Mary play, you should pardon the joke. It did not make Frank feel better, it made him cheap; it was like going begging. He didn't think he believed in God, and it seemed wrong to go asking for favors when he couldn't give the faith that was required. All he could give was his determination.

So he could certainly stand around by a pay phone, sweating, his heart in his throat, his pulses pounding. _This's got to be real, it's got to be—what else could it be? A joke? Sure, I guess it would be pretty funny, me standing around here for hours—days! waiting for Vince to show up, but why? Why take the risk? It has to be real, right?_ Frank could do it, he could stand there until hell froze over, until his pounding heart attacked, or fibrillated, or whatever hearts did now, he could stand there until—

He could stand there until Vince showed up.

"Vince."

 _He looks—_ and Frank's thoughts stuttered. _Healthy,_ finally came into his mind. He wasn't the wasted, agonized spectre Frank had seen in his nightmares. He needs a haircut, a shave—and Frank found that he was breathing, really breathing deeply for the first time in almost three years.

Vince looked nearly as poleaxed as Frank felt. What came into his face next was heartbreak. Frank didn't let that stop him from going to Vince and pulling him into his arms. Vince clung to him, maybe crying, maybe hyperventilating, Frank couldn't tell, didn't care, it was Vince, and he was alive.

They sat in Frank's car. He'd tried to think of someplace they could go, but no place felt safe to him, and finally he'd dragged Vince out of the building and down the six blocks to where his car waited in a cold, anonymous parking garage.

"I'm sorry, Frank. I'm sorry." Frank didn't know how many times he'd said it; it was starting to sound like the only words Vince still knew. Frank had been ignoring it, had ignored it all along, as he pulled Vince down the street and up the elevator, as he shoved him into his car. He was hoping Vince could purge the guilt from his system and they could talk. That wasn't working, and he was losing patience.

"Vince." Frank strove to keep his tone quiet. Yelling was the instinctive parental response; it was what he **wanted** to do, but he wasn't going to indulge himself. "Quit apologizing and look at me." When Vince's eyes met his, Frank said very deliberately, "It's all right." It wasn't, but what was he going to say—you should have called? He **should** have called, dammit.

And yet, sitting here right next to Frank, close enough to touch, he seemed too far away to talk to.

Vinnie was playing with a pack of cigarettes, peeling away the cellophane, slowly tearing away the paper. Viceroys, Frank noted, the same brand Steelgrave had been smoking. He turned on the engine for a moment, powered down the windows. "Go ahead."

"Huh?" Vinnie looked up from the mess he was making. He scrupulously picked up the shreds of paper and dumped them into the ashtray.

Frank punched in the car's lighter and Vince caught on. 

"Oh. Thanks, Frank." But he didn't wait for the lighter to pop out. And Frank saw that the lighter he pulled from his pocket looked to very much like the one Steelgrave had used. _A present, I suppose. Some things never change._

"Vince." He didn't even know what to ask. "Talk to me." He had to understand what was in Vince's head, and soon, because anger was starting to replace gratitude that Vince was alive. Where the hell had he been?

Vince closed his eyes, pulled smoke deep into his lungs. "Guy came to the door, said he'd heard I was looking for information about Tommy Gallagher. I was stupid, I opened the door to let him in. He wasn't alone." Vince shrugged. "They knocked me out, I guess. After that— I'm not sure what I remember after that, what I've dreamed or imagined. I know I didn't dream all that time alone, but I didn't know how long it had been 'til they told me. When I woke up in the hospital, I thought I was dead, that the nurse was an angel. Guess I'm not the first guy to think that, though, huh Frank?"

 _Vinnie, where have you been? Why didn't you call **me**?_ Frank held his tongue, waited, listening, only half-caring about this story he seemed to have no part in. He felt as though he'd been living in a parallel universe, right next door to Vince, but as far separated from him as the moon.

"Rudy took me back home—I dunno how long I was there, they kept me pretty doped up—" Vince held out his scarred wrist. "I remember the night I did this—"

Looking at the white lines of scar, Frank felt the blade slice his heart. "Oh, Christ, Vinnie, why—?"

"I remember wanting to die so it would quit hurting." The simplicity of the words made Frank ache.

"Vince, why didn't you call me?"

"I tried to, when I was home, but the phone was dead. I kept thinking it had to be some kind'a mistake, that somebody'd forgot to pay the bill, but when I asked Rudy, he said we couldn't let anybody know I was back just yet. It was because he wasn't sure I was gonna make it, and what with everybody thinking I was dead—"

"He told you that?" The anger that had been fermenting in Frank's heart found a target.

Vince shook his head. "He didn't tell me anything, he told Pooch. I got most of my information from eavesdropping." He gave a short laugh. "Good thing I'm trained for that, huh, Frank?" Vince stopped abruptly, tossed his still burning cigarette out the window. "Can we get outta your car? I'm getting a cramp in my leg."

"Sure." They left the relative warmth of the car. Frank leaned against the car door, watching as Vince paced restlessly in front of him. "Vince, what's Steelgrave's part in all this?"

Vinnie stopped, gave Frank a disgusted look. "C'm'on, Frank, I got over Sonny a long time ago."

 _What?_ Frank stared at him, waiting for Vince to go on, but all he got in response was Vince's best _No, Ma, I didn't do it_ look. Frank wanted to smack him one. "Vince. You don't need to—don't lie to me."

Vince shook his head. "Lie to you about **what,** Frank?"

"About Steelgrave!" Frank couldn't believe Vince was doing this.

"Frank, what's the point of talking about Sonny after all this time? Why bring up the past, can't we just let it go?"

Frank had looked away for just a moment, and in that moment Vince had disappeared. For one anxious heartbeat he stood there wanting to scream, until he realized Vince had resumed his pacing, had stepped into the shadows and now was stepping into the light.

 _What's wrong with you? Get a hold of yourself, he's not going to vanish right before your eyes!_ "Vince. I know Steelgrave is alive, and I know you've been with him."

Instead of answering him, or arguing, Vince changed the subject. "I wanted to call, Frank, I really did. You don't know how many times I started to, dialed most of your number and hung up."

"Why didn't you?" He let Vince change tracks—when had he ever had any luck changing the course of this particular train, if it was unwilling to be changed?—and tried to keep the question from becoming an accusation. It was hard to tell how successful he'd been; the guilt on Vince's face was like a mask.

Vinnie stopped in front of him, looked at him for a long moment before saying, "I was afraid, Frank. I was just afraid."

"Of what?" Frank forced himself say it gently; what he wanted to do was bellow. 

"Of getting grabbed again. I was afraid they were watching your place, bugging your phone—"

_So was I._

"And I was afraid that if I tried to contact you, I'd have to come back here. I knew you'd never let me go with a phone call. I was safe, and I wanted to stay safe."

 _When did Vince ever worry about his safety?_ Frank wondered. _Never._ He peered at him in the dim light, saw things he didn't want to see. There was something different about Vince, something was missing. He no longer met the world with what Frank thought of as his _what do **you** want? _attitude; the arrogance, what was left of it, was all an act. Something had broken, and the pieces hadn't gone back together the same.

"I knew they had told you I was dead . . . ."

"And you knew I didn't believe it," Frank intruded softly. Vince gave him a smile.

"Sure. I'm selfish, Frank, I **counted** on you not believing it. As much as I wanted you to let go so you could have some peace, a part of me was glad you wouldn't let go." Frank could see what it cost Vince to say these words, to admit to this meanness; he couldn't meet Frank's eyes. Frank reached out, touched Vince's sleeve lightly. "A part of me wanted you to believe no matter what. It's like you were the keeper of—of the parts of me that're gone, the stuff I had to jettison to stay afloat."

"You mean like your idealism and desire to make the world a better place?" Frank was sorry the second the words were out of his mouth, afraid Vinnie would shut down.

He didn't, though. And he didn't blow up the way he would have in the past. He just shook his head. "No, Frank, I mean like putting myself in the line of fire and losing myself piece by piece with each investigation. I'm all outta pieces, I can't do it anymore—"

Frank was the one who blew up. "And how many times did the Uncle and I try to get you to see you had to hang it up, get out of undercover work—" Somehow the frustration that went with the old argument felt good.

"I know you did! So what? If you're looking for an I-told-you-so, have at it! You think the Bureau **wants** me back, Frank? Why don't we go talk to Paul—or you think the AG would be better? You wanna go now?"

Frank stared at Vinnie, the buzzing in his ears drowning out whatever else he was saying. The words were different, but the bluff was the same. Not that Vince had never pulled a bluff before, but everything about this—the tone, the attitude—was Steelgrave.

"—after everything that's gone down, do you really see them giving me even low-level security clearance?" 

Frank just stood there, realized his mouth was open, and shut it.

"Frank?"

Frank shook his head. "No." What other answer was there to to that question?

"No." Vince stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets, hunched his shoulders, as though he was suddenly feeling the cold. "So what's that leave? Back to the old neighborhood, open a garage, live with 'em all thinking what they think about me—?"

"That wouldn't be the problem," Frank said.

"What do you mean?"

It was as hard a confession to make as Vinnie's had been. "I spoke at your memorial service." He sighed, then forced the words out. "I told them you were a federal agent."

"You did **what**? Frank, how could you do that? How could you—why?"

And what could he say? _It's what your mother wanted?_ But it was true, and Frank said it. Vinnie stood there with his eyes closed, his arms wrapped around himself, trying to accept this. Finally he sighed deeply, absorbing the blow.

"She wanted my name cleared," he said finally. "She wanted people to know I was doing good . . . no wonder Rudy didn't know what to do with me." He sighed, came to stand next to Frank, leaning against the car with him, leaning against him a little. "Forget about it. What difference does it make? It's not the mob I gotta worry about, it's not the mob that had me grabbed—we both know that. We don't know for sure who did it—" He turned to look at Frank, pleading in his face, in his voice. "Do we?"

Frank shook his head. "I've tried to find out—"

"Don't!" Vinnie's voice sounded panicky, and his skin—what Frank could see of it—had gone an unhealthy chalky color. "Please, God, Frank, promise me you won't ask anybody anymore questions about me, promise you won't— Please. Pretend I'm dead, just like I've been doing."

 _"Just like I've been doing."_ The words exasperated Frank even as they broke his heart. "C'm'on, come with me." Frank took him by the arm and pulled him along, over to where they could see the outside world. "Look!" Frank ordered. The view wasn't quite the one he'd spent the morning hating, but it was enough to get his point across. He pointed Vinnie toward the 59th Street Bridge. "You've still got that money Roger gave you—oh, don't give me that look, I knew all along there was more. You've got a whole new identity, don't you? So what's the damn problem?" Frank demanded. His anger had finally escaped. "We agree that the Bureau's out for you, so you default to a garage in Brooklyn? This isn't an either/or proposition, kiddo. It's a big world out there, but you act like you're in prison. You can do whatever you want to."

Vince was staring at him as though he'd started speaking in tongues, which annoyed Frank even more. "What? Did you think I wanted to own you, carry you around in my pocket? What I want is for you to be happy, Vince."

Vince looked out at the view, what there was of it through the clouds. "What if I never came back?" he asked at last.

Frank had been a parent long enough to recognize this tactic of asking general permission with a single goal in mind, and he came close to refusing to play along on general principles. _You're not his father,_ he reminded himself, _you're his friend. Why don't you try acting like it?_ "I would miss you," he admitted, "but it would be all right." That settled, Frank repeated his earlier question. "What is Steelgrave's part in all this?" And before Vince could issue another denial, he added, "If you're trying to protect him, you're wasting your time. I've seen him, I've talked to him—hell, I had a cup of coffee with him, but he wouldn't tell me anything. What did you think I was doing here, anyway? You think that's how I spend my time now, hanging around Manhattan tourist traps? I was there because he called me and told me he was giving you away."

Vinnie sighed a half-laugh. "Shit, yeah, of course. I was so excited about seeing you, I never even thought about how it happened."

The wind had picked up, and the temperature had dropped to where they could see their breath. They stood huddled together against the cold, sharing body heat, talking softly now, like conspirators.

"I used to keep a piece of paper in my wallet. It had 'eight months' written on it—that's how long they had me, and it seemed like no matter how many times I asked, I couldn't remember that number. Sonny got tired of me asking, so he wrote it down for me." Frank felt Vinnie shrug. "I don't think I wanted to remember it. I don't remember Rudy's guys getting me out and once I was out, I'm not sure what I remember, what I imagined, what really happened."

Frank had to force himself not to grab Vince and shake him. He might be breathing, physically he might be healthy, but— _he carried a slip of paper in his wallet to remind himself how long he was away. Oh, Jesus, Vinnie._

"From what I can figure out, I was pretty sick and I kept talking to Sonny and it was freaking Rudy out. So Rudy went and got him for me. I don't know how that happened, how he knew Sonny was alive."

Frank didn't look up into Vince's face; he kept his eyes level, staring at the zipper on the leather jacket Vince wore. It was new, he noted, and still held its comforting leather smell. He let his head drop, looked down at the new black boots Vince wore, and sighed.

"I've never gotten the whole story straight, since Sonny doesn't want to talk about it and I haven't really talked to Rudy since we disappeared—" Vince stopped, searched his pockets, found his lighter and a new pack of cigarettes, though he didn't light up. He just held them for a minute, lighter in his left hand, cigarette pack in his right. Then he put them back.

"Disappeared?" Frank asked.

"Yeah, we skipped out in the middle of the night."

Vince's fingers were red from the cold. Carefully, Frank reached out and took one hand in each of his, giving them his warmth. "Skipped out from where, Vinnie?"

"My house. We were at my house."

"Your house in Brooklyn?" Frank couldn't keep his angry incredulity from slipping out. _I could have walked there in the time I've been waiting for him to be found, I could have crawled—!_

"Yeah. At one point I was trying to steal enough change from Rudy's coat pockets to come to your house, only I couldn't've got out of the house even if I'd had the money. I was drugged up all the time, and Pooch was always watching me."

Even more than he'd liked to have seen Sonny Steelgrave dead—again—Frank wanted to punch Rudy Aiuppo in his lying, deceiving face.

"What did Rudy tell you?" Frank asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

"Rudy? Rudy told me to eat my dinner, brush my teeth, and quit talking to the dead guy. What sense I got of it, I got from Sonny, later, after we left."

"If you haven't talked to Rudy, how do you know it's true?" _Steelgrave could have been telling him anything, and Vince would have believed him._

Vinnie sighed. "All Sonny told me was that since I wasn't immediately snapped back to reality, Rudy was probably going to have me locked up. But by the time he told me that, we were long gone. Anyway, I thought all along Rudy was gonna have me locked up."

"What did Steelgrave tell you to get you to go with him?"

Vinnie didn't say anything. Frank looked up into his face. "Vince? What did Steelgrave tell you to get you to go with him?" Vinnie had the same look on his face he'd had when Paul had asked him if he had more money from Lococco. "Vince?"

Vinnie stared at the ceiling. "Um."

"Vince." Frank was getting a little nervous, and more than a little angry. "'Um' is not an answer, Vince."

Vince shrugged. "He said, come on, we're leaving." There was a scary, unholy glee Vince was struggling to keep out of his voice.

"He didn't tell you Rudy was going to lock you up?"

"He didn't have to, Frank! I told you, I already knew he was thinking about it. Actually, at that point **I** thought I was dead, so—"

" **What**?"

"Well, I thought Sonny was dead, Rudy kept telling me to quit talking to him, he wasn't there, he was dead—and then Rudy's talking to him! What was I supposed to think?"

"And Steelgrave tells you come on, we're leaving, and you just go with him?" Frank couldn't believe this.

"Yeah. Well."

He couldn't tell if Vince was embarrassed by this or what. "Yeah, well **what**?"

"Well, I figured if I was dead, we were in purgatory. And he had my car, and—I don't know, Frank. I thought we were busting out of purgatory. It made sense at the time!"

"And that's all Steelgrave told you?"

"No, he told me—he told me I wasn't dead." Vinnie shrugged. "Frank, he didn't know that much about it, Rudy didn't tell **him** anything, except that I was sick. It's all been pretty weird.

"Weird how?"

Vinnie shook his head. "Between the recent stuff I can't remember and the old stuff Sonny can't remember, we've had conversations that make talking to Mel look like demonstrations of logic and reason. And lemme tell you, Sonny doesn't do existentialism well."

The fondness in Vince's voice made Frank feel as though he'd been relegated to that parallel universe again, that he was not part of this. _The hell I'm not!_ And finally Frank's anger swarmed out, a cloud of crazed hornets. He could hear his own voice bouncing off the walls of the parking garage, he could see Vince standing there, sick at heart, holding himself together, trying to weather this storm with no protection but his own skin, until finally, finally, **finally,** Frank truly heard himself, and stopped.

When he had prayed for Vince's return—and he had, Frank was ashamed to admit it, but he had prayed, he'd gone crawling back to God because no one else seemed to be be able to help him, when he had prayed, he'd sworn—on his mother's life—he had sworn that all he wanted was Vince to be safe. "I'll take good care of him," he'd promised. _Is this your idea of taking good care of him, screaming at him like this?_

His prayer had been simple: "Please bring Vince home safe. Don't do it for me, do it for Vince. Vince doesn't deserve this. Please, do it for Vince." He had prayed those words, and God had come through. It was a miracle—

It was sort of a miracle. The fact that He had used Sonny Steelgrave as Vince's sanctuary proved that God had a far more perverse sense of humor than anyone had ever given Him credit for. He had done exactly what Frank had prayed for, He had saved Vince. He hadn't done Frank any favor, because Frank hadn't asked for one; in fact, Frank had said leave me out of it, just save Vince. So who the hell did he have the right to be angry at right now? Vince, for taking the salvation that was offered? God? Maybe, because there was no way God didn't know what he really wanted, even if he never said please give him back to me. But he hadn't asked for that. So he could be mad at himself—and at Aiuppo, for lying to him, and at Steelgrave just because. But screaming at Vince because he was mad at himself was not acceptable behavior.

If Vince was angry at him, or hurt by him, or disappointed in him, he gave no indication of it. He walked over to Frank and put his arms around him. "I don't have words for how sorry I am, Frank, and I don't think you really wanna hear about how I ate my heart out over what I knew I was doing to you."

Frank tried to stop him—the last thing he wanted was to hear Vince saying he was sorry yet again—and for Frank yelling at him, at that—but Vince just held him tighter. "Shut up, Frank, just shut up. I deserved every word of it, and a lot more. You got no idea how ashamed I am."

Frank thought maybe he'd missed something. "Ashamed of what?"

"Of cracking so easy. I know what they did to me was hardly anything at all, I know guys had a lot worse things done and came out fine, but all they had to do was lock me up for eight months and not talk to me, and I come apart at the seams. I'm sorry, Frank. I tried to be strong."

"Have you worked the cramp out of your leg?" Frank asked.

"Huh?" The abrupt subject change had confused him, which is what Frank had been going for.

"Could we sit back in the car again?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, whatever you want."

So Vinnie let go of him, and they got back in Frank's car, and Frank started the engine to get them a little heat. He reached over and put his hand on Vince's shoulder. "Tell me."

And Vince did. He talked about the loneliness, the fear, the desperation. "It was—they weren't even trying to torture me. It was torture as a side effect, they just—they—they grabbed me to teach me a lesson, then they found out who my stepfather was and they—they set me aside, they put me in room—it was like they put me in a closet for safe keeping. I wasn't even important enough to—" Vince gulped back a sob he'd been trying not to let out.

"Vince, you don't have to—"

"Please, Frank, please, I've been to confession, I couldn't— I've—please, let me tell you, please—"

"Tell me," Frank said again.

He was quiet for a minute, his hands searching for his cigarettes he knew perfectly well the location of, but still couldn't fine. Frank fumbled them out of his pocket, punched the car lighter again, and when it was ready, put a cigarette in Vinnie's mouth and lit it for him.

He sat taking long drags, and when the cigarette was half-gone, he said, "For a while there, I kept going to confession, wanting to talk about it, to lay it all out, but I never could. I'd get in the box, and it would seem—too hard. And pointless, because no matter how much I talked, he'd never get it. That's why—that's one reason I want to tell you, you understand the situation—"

"I understand," Frank said, "I understand, Vince. Tell me."

And he was sobbing, his hand shaking so hard Frank was afraid he'd burn himself with his cigarette. "It was bad enough I was stupid enough to let 'em grab me, it was bad enough I couldn't—it was bad enough—there was nothing I could do, stone walls, thick door, I couldn't, there was nothing, I had no control, no control over nothing, I couldn't— Sleep! I could sleep, when I could sleep, I could do that, but nothing—they fed me when they wanted, they woke me up when they wanted, they—it was always dark, darkish, after a while I started making up what time it was, it was whatever time I said it was, but I knew it was made-up—"

Frank wanted to say something, wanted to interrupt and comfort, but Vince needed to talk.

"I prayed! I cried, and I swore, and I prayed, I punched the walls—and I begged, I begged, I begged them to come and talk to me, I told them everything, I told them—everything! Every secret I knew, every sin I ever committed, every—every— I told them! The worst part was, they didn't care, they didn't want anything . . . ."

The cigarette had burned down to the filter. Frank took it, threw it out the window, and lit another for Vince, coughing on the smoke he tried not to inhale. He put the new cigarette between Vince's lips.

"They never even came to tell me to shut up. I can't explain what that feels like, to be so unwanted by the people who hold your life—I don't mean like life-or-death, I mean the moments of your life, the ones who have to remember to come feed you, and bring your water, and empty your bucket—and if they came and found me dead, they'd probably just try to figure out a way to get Rudy's money and give him some other guy, disappear or something."

Frank didn't say that he'd known this was a weak spot of Vince's, he didn't say he remembered when Vince was laid up and on the pills, depressed and pissed off and feeling fat and useless. If they'd been trying to break him, the bastards couldn't have found a better way to do it. "You know you have nothing to be ashamed of," Frank said quietly, and when Vince tried to interrupt, Frank squeezed his shoulder gently. "You don't get to be ashamed of being human. You know the effects isolation have on human beings, you know how damaging it can be. Vince, where have you been all this time?"

"Driving around the country. Hiding from Rudy."

"Oh, my God, Vince, if you start regaling me with Butch and Sundance stories about you and Steelgrave, I'm going to take out my gun and shoot you! What are you doing? Are you seriously telling me your future is with Steelgrave, as his—" Frank's thoughts got lost, trying to understand. "His what? Valet? Chauffeur? Paid companion?"

"Frank," Vince said gently, reaching out to put his hand on Frank's arm, "I'm not working for Sonny. I'm living with him."

It didn't seem like it should be possible for something to come as a total surprise while at the same time being absolutely inevitable. Frank felt distinctly as though he'd been sucker-punched. When he didn't say anything—he **couldn't** say anything—Vince added, "C'm'on, Frank. He didn't risk Rudy popping him so he'd have somebody to wash his car. He didn't bring me back to you because I'm such a swell guy."

Though it didn't come as a surprise, it was a terrible blow. He didn't want to hear it, and the note of levity in Vince's voice was infuriating. Now he did grab Vince and shake him, hard. "Goddammit, Vince, Steelgrave is—"

Vince cut him off, but he didn't pull away. "Yeah, I know, Frank. Everything you can say, and some things even you don't know about. I know. What do you want me to say? I don't care? I **do** care, and so what? You ought'a be happy, Frank. I finally learned that life was a relative venture."

"He called me in the middle of the night last night to ask if I wanted you back. He's left you here with me." Frank couldn't have sworn it wasn't spite that made him say it, but he hoped it wasn't—or, at least that it wasn't only spite.

It didn't seem to faze Vince anyway. "Yeah. I gotta find out what's going on."

Vinnie was quiet for a few minutes, and Frank realized it wasn't that he was unconcerned; it was that this was personal, just between him and Steelgrave, and he'd shut Frank out. "Vince—"

Again Vince cut him off. "Hey, you know, it's not like I'm living in Shangri-La. We fight a lot, but it's OK. And if it's not—" he shrugged. "It's not like I'm gonna take a header off one'a these ledges. I haven't been in great shape, but I haven't been thinking about doing that."

"Vince. You don't have to— It's a big world out there, you don't have to stay with Steelgrave, you don't have to stay with anyone—"

"I'm not with Sonny because I **have** to be; I'm with him because I want to be. Frank—if you want to know, I'll tell you. I just always figured you didn't want to know."

Did he want to know? No, but— Frank had the feeling he was never going to see Vince again. There was never going to be another chance to understand. Did he want to spend the rest of his life wondering what Vince hadn't told him?

"Vinnie, stop being melodramatic and tell me what you want to tell me."

Vince smiled at him. "It's not just that I love Sonny, it's that when I'm with Sonny, I know who I am. I have a past, a real one. He knows my real name; he knows who I am. And I know who he is. I don't have to pretend anything. You know how hard it is to be undercover. Try to imagine doing it for the rest of your life, only with no one knowing who you really are."

Frank didn't ask what he was going to do now that Steelgrave had ditched him. "Are you going to be all right?"

"Yeah, sure. Mostly what I've been worrying about is you, feeling guilty because—I knew what I was doing to you was wrong, letting you keep worrying about me when I was fine. An' yeah, feeling sorry for myself because I couldn't see you. I've really missed you." Vinnie hugged him, briefly but fervently.

"I've missed you too, Vince."

"And I'm gonna go on missing you when I leave, but—" Vinnie put his hand on Frank's cheek. "You'll be OK now?"

Frank sighed. "Yeah, I'll be OK now."

"Then I'll be OK now."

They stood there a little while longer, Frank feeling Vince's breath on the top of his head, a second of warmth, followed by wind that felt colder than death.

"We better go," Frank said at last. They couldn't stand there forever. He felt Vince nod.

"How did you know they'd told me you were dead?" Frank asked. They had walked back to his car, and Vinnie had turned down the offer of a ride.

Vinnie laughed. "Easy. You sold my car. I knew there was no way you'd've done it otherwise." Vince grabbed him again, hugged him hard, kissed his face several times. "I'm gonna be OK, Frank. I want you to be OK, too. I want you to be happy." Vince laughed, kissed him again. "I know you, Frank, you're never happy, but for me—be happy, OK?"

"I'll be happy, Vince," Frank told him. "I promise."


End file.
